Nut shots, just because they ARE nut shots SHOULD be illegal for the damage they can do AFTER the fight is done, moreso than their ability to end a fight. If it was the ability to end a fight that made the shot illegal, then the chin would be off limits.

Lasting damage is a factor, but no, it's not nearly the same as hitting a chin:

A) It's much much harder to land a clean shot on someone's chin (especially someone who keeps their hands up) than it is to land a nutshot.

Seriously, locked up up against someone in a clinch you sometimes put more effort into avoiding the groin when you throw knees than it would be to hit it.

I'm not saying the d34d1y styles would suddenly own mma if you allowed groin shots, because you still need a delivery system. What I'm saying is, if groin shots were legal you would see a metric fuckton of fights decided by them, some directly (guy drops) or indirectly (guy is hampered by pain and takes a vicious followup beating from his unencumbered opponent).

B) Incidental contact to the chin does not cause severe pain.

If anyone wants to perform a scientific test we can have an mma match, except 30s into it, we call time out, and I get to kick you full force square in the nutsack, then call time in.

It's like they think that since some arts don't train how to kick people in the nuts, those people won't know how to do it.

My 6 year old has no formal martial training and has already mastered the art of kicking me in the nuts deliberately. My own training helps me avoid most of his kicks but he's got a height advantage on me.

My 6 year old has no formal martial training and has already mastered the art of kicking me in the nuts deliberately.

Which shows exactly how much training you need to kick someone in the nuts. A style that "trains" this is wasting their time - not because a kick to the pills is ineffective, but because it doesn't require any fucking training.

Which shows exactly how much training you need to kick someone in the nuts. A style that "trains" this is wasting their time - not because a kick to the pills is ineffective, but because it doesn't require any fucking training.

I don't know, a kick to the nuts is more or less a mawashigeri; I bear the painful memories of many a mawashigeri hyperextended, seized, or otherwise gone wrong. I also recall a few attempts at savaging my genitals actually missed their mark and hit my around my tailbone.

^
It depends on the opponent's stance. In many fighting stances or moments a diagonally upward round kick lines up much better than a front kick for groin shots. I know some Kyokushin people call that kick mikazuki geri to distinguish it, but that's a 3rd kick AFAIC.

Saying you don't need to train groin shots because you can just kick there naturally without training is bad logic. That's like a TKDer saying he doesn't need to train low kicks because when the time comes to fight he'll just take his kicks and aim them lower.

Well, the fact is being able to aim a kick low is a lot different than having low kicks fully integrated into your fighting. The distance is different due to the height, the angles you kick at are different, and it takes experience to find the best opportunities to use it. We also should all know that putting a kick and a punch together on the fly is a lot different than launching a quick combo you've drilled 100x. It's a technique like anything else. It follows the same laws.

The problem lies in people who use them as an argument not really training those techniques themselves or having a delivery system for them!

I'm pretty sure if someone actually trained ball-kicking in a live manner would overall be able to make much better use them overall than someone who randomly decided to aim a kick lower during a fight.